


Across Dimensions

by AntigravityDevice



Category: KÖNIG Ralf - Works
Genre: M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 20:20:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntigravityDevice/pseuds/AntigravityDevice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Konrad and Paul first met, it was like worlds colliding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Across Dimensions

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jaegecko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegecko/gifts).



It was the second time Konrad had stepped out of his everyday life and into the strange new world Paul inhabited. He looked around Paul's flat in the bright light of the summer afternoon and decided that jungle metaphors were apt. It was an ungodly mess, there were life forms unknown to science in the kitchen, and the air seemed thick and close. The only thing that broke the analogy was the sorry state of the vegetation. Konrad spotted two potted plants that seemed parched and lonely. They also looked like gifts, judging by the pots. Paul didn't seem like the type to go out and buy himself house plants. Truthfully, Konrad didn't know what type Paul was. It was a new experience to have intimate knowledge about someone he had known for all of a week.

The splashing sounds coming from the tiny, mold-ridden bathroom subsided, and Paul appeared in the doorway without a hint of a towel. Nudity seemed a natural state to him. Konrad turned his eyes away, then back, because he liked the glimpse he had got, then away again when Paul seemed to register he was in the room.

"I gotta get going. Gird my loins and raise my sword on high." Paul made a pumping motion with his hips, flashing a grin before it was covered by the tee-shirt he pulled on.

Konrad tugged his backpack closer, instinctively, as if to say that he was just leaving and didn't want to make Paul late. "Oh. Right. Your club meeting."

To be honest, Konrad couldn't remember which one this was. Paul seemed to be a member of every single student organisation there was, as long as gay rights, crazy drug parties or science fiction were somehow involved. He loved to talk about all the activities he was involved in - actual studying didn't seem to be included - so Konrad absorbed, wondering if he would get tired of it eventually. So far he found Paul's heated student rhetoric unnervingly attractive.

Paul bent down to hunt for socks. Konrad looked away, then back again. "Nah, it's just Rüdiger, Willi, that idiot boyfriend of his, Hans or whatever, and me. Willi's boyfriend's never seen Conan the Barbarian." He shook the mismatched pair he'd found like a club. "Heathens and nonbelievers! Crom take them!"

Konrad hated the film, but he had seen it, and had a fair memory. "And if Crom can't hear you, to hell with him?"

Paul stopped and smiled without teeth, in a way that made Konrad squirm on the mangy sofa. Straight out of the shower, hair in wet spikes and skin still a little flushed from the hot water, Paul was ridiculously adorable. Something inside Konrad burst open and spread warmth to his extremities.

"Shit. Half past four." Paul pulled on his jeans and rushed across the room, skipping over piles of dirty laundry and books and video cases with ease. He took a few VHS cassettes out of the shelf, shoved them into a satchel covered in badges and pins, and threw it on his shoulder. "Keys, keys..."

Konrad spotted the robot keychain under the sofa table, and reached out for the fistful of keys. Paul had keys to several clubhouses, he seemed to recall. From the way Paul talked about it, it seemed he was only ever home when he wanted to have sex there.

He offered the keys to Paul, intending to throw them, but Paul sauntered over to the sofa, eyes narrowing as if in concentration. Then Konrad was pinned to the sofa cushions, Paul's legs crushing his thighs, and Paul smelled like cheap soap and tasted like, well, like Paul. Konrad already knew that taste well enough to crave it, and this was the second time they'd met.

"I'll be back around nine. Come over if you want and I'll show you what else we can do with that ass of yours." Paul licked his lower lip, gave Konrad's cock a wake-up squeeze through his trousers and bounced back up.

How did he make it sound like an invitation to a tea party? Come over if you want. Bring cake.

While Konrad waited for his heart to stop trying to hammer its way out of his ears, Paul pulled on his training shoes and leather jacket and opened the door. "See ya." One more cute grin, with teeth this time, and he was gone.

Apparently Konrad was already trusted enough to be left alone to see himself out. Then again, what was there to steal? Konrad sat in the middle of Paul's blaringly quiet flat, inhaling the pungent air that hinted at mold and dust and sexual acts that he would've denied enjoying a week ago. He knew he would be back by nine.

When he stepped out, carefully locking the door behind him, the rest of the world seemed dim and washed out. Still, it was his life, so he dragged his thoughts back from Paul and his dimension and made a stern decision to have that talk with Brigitte. What had started out as an experiment, an excursion into the wild, was quickly approaching something he would like to make a habit, and he couldn't explain it away.

On a whim, he bought flowers, because he was pretty certain Brigitte would like something to throw at him.

 

o o o

 

As they exited the bar, a gust of wind almost threw them back in the door.

"I fucking hate autumn." Paul sneezed and sighed miserably, burying his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket.

Konrad was glad to leave. The New Wave or whatever it was called made his head ache and he was getting tired of second-guessing which of his many friends Paul had fucked and which ignored Konrad for some other reason. He liked some of them, but tonight's assortment he had absolutely nothing in common with, not to mention that he never felt entirely comfortable in the sort of bars Paul frequented.

"That was Thomas Heiberg!" Paul exclaimed in a plaintive tone, "Thomas fucking Heiberg of the God-given ass and hairy arms comes on to me and I have to turn him down! In front of everybody! They'll think my dick's withered away and died!"

Paul's whining was getting on his nerves. It was about time to admit that they had nothing in common. Paul was a child in perpetual search of a sugar high, that was, if one substituted hairy navels and thick cocks for sugar. Where was this supposed to go between them? Sure, the sex was great, but how far did that take them, exactly?

Instead of suggesting calling a taxi as usual, he just started walking, but Paul followed him.

Konrad eyed him and bit the bullet. "What do you mean you had to? I don't recall any guns pointed at your head."

"Oh, please! You mean you would've been okay with being left alone with –"

Konrad found himself raising his voice, too. "No! Spare me from being left alone with your friends at all costs! They hate me, fine! Just don't rub my face in it!"

Paul gestured wildly. "They don't hate you. They think you're boring and that you're making me boring."

"Well, thank you so much! I feel much better!"

Paul turned around on his heels and walked backwards as he glowered at Konrad. "I'll never get to suck Thomas Heiberg's fat cock and it's all your fault. Boring's about the nicest word I can think of for that."

Konrad spluttered. "What? How is it my fault? When did I ever –"

Turning his back to Konrad and his face against the whipping wind, Paul carried on his tirade. "Are you dense? You were with me. I never would've heard the end of it, from you or from Rüdiger and the others. This fucking sucks. Where are we going, anyway?"

Konrad looked around for the first time, realising that his feet were steadily taking him back to his and - back to his flat. It wasn't that far from here, only a few blocks away, which was why he had probably started instinctively walking towards it. No wonder Paul didn't know; he had never been there.

"My place." It had an empty echo to it. There was a Brigitte-sized and shaped hole in the flat, and he wouldn't be rid of it before he moved out, he knew it.

Paul laughed and shrugged his jacket closer. "Ooh, are we playing dangerously? What about the het unit?"

Konrad stopped in his tracks, a red mist of indignation falling over his eyes. His hands squeezed into fists.

"Her name is Brigitte and she's gone! It's over, it's been over for weeks; haven't you been listening at all?"

"I told you it's none of my business!"

"None of your business?!"

They stared at each other in the dark street, breathing hard, tense and twitchy, and Konrad could almost see the ravine opening between them. What was the use? They shouted at each other across entire worlds. Words didn't mean the same things over in Paul's dimension.

Strangely enough, the more exasperated with Paul he became, the more he wanted to throw him down and fuck him. It couldn't be right, but it seemed the only thing that could possibly spring the coil that had wound and tightened in his gut.

"Listen to me," he said, and almost didn't recognise his own voice, "you are going to stop whining about Thomas Heiberg. Not another word about his big fat cock. Not another word."

Paul's eyes widened, then didn't seem to focus. He shifted in place and his mouth opened slightly. Konrad recognised the signs by now, and almost reeled - the sense of power was new and intoxicating.

"I'm going to take you back to my place and fuck you into my mattress. And - and then you will swear you will never, ever call her that again, you hear me?"

"Yes," Paul said, hoarsely, and pulled his head down and kissed him, and it was almost hot enough to make Konrad forget they were standing right out on the street. He grabbed Paul's arm, then just the sleeve of his jacket, tugging. It was time to go.

They somehow staggered the rest of the way, stumbling over hungry kisses and roaming hands. The wind was forgotten, and if there were other people in the world, they didn't exist for them. Konrad's hand was sweaty when he shook out his keys, his back hitting the door in a way that might have hurt, had Paul not claimed all his nerve endings.

 _You were with me._

The words hit the floor, finally. The door opened with a familiar creak, and they fell into the flat, together.

"Where's the bedroom?" Paul asked between breaths, eyes flickering over the plants, the armchairs, Brigitte's favourite rug, the little table that used to belong to Konrad's aunt. All the things that had previously had nothing to do with him.

Konrad leaned in and kissed him across dimensions, because the gap wasn't that wide after all, and showed him the way.

**Author's Note:**

> This was interesting to write; I've read the Finnish translations of König's comics, so to me, they speak either Finnish or German, not English - I wish I could've found a way to use the word "Sahneschnittchen" somewhere in this...
> 
> Here's hoping for more translations and fics of König's comics!


End file.
